Tempest Toss'd
by Esmerelda
Summary: Dawn thinks of storms.


TITLE: Tempest Toss'd  
AUTHOR: Esmerelda  
E-MAIL: animus_liber@hotmail.com  
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, never have been, never will be.  
TIMELINE: Post 'The Gift'.  
SPOILERS: 'The Gift'.  
SYNOPSIS: Dawn never used to be afraid of storms.  
IMPROV: #17 noble - damn - struggle - still  
CHARACTER: Dawn  
AUTHOR'S NOTES: One day, the part of Dawn which is happy is going to speak to me. I'm sure of it. Probably not the night after a huge storm, though.  
FEEDBACK: I'll love you forever.  
RATING: PG  
  
  
  
  
It's like I see her face in every flash of lightning.  
  
There's been a lot of storms since she died. Giles says it's residue from Glory's spell, an effect of the portal that opened. I prefer to think of it as the world mourning her death as hard as I am. Lots of thunder and lightning... her death, which was in lightning. We told them she'd been electrocuted. It fits.  
  
It doesn't quite fit her. Buffy was afraid of storms, but I never was. Ever since I was little when the sky lit up and the thunder crashed (God throwing a tantrum, Dad used to say, but I don't think there's a God anymore) I'd crawl sleepily out of bed, dragging my blankie, and brave the cold and the skeleton-flashes of the yard to climb into Buffy's. She'd be lying there rigid, wanting to hide her face but not wanting to seem like a kid, so I'd curl up with her and let her hold on to me so tight and struggle not to cry.  
  
After she started getting into trouble, after she became the Slayer as I found out later, she was distant. The only time we seemed to connect anymore was lying still and quiet on her bed while a storm raged around us. She would have been so strong then, already the protector, but storms scared her more than ever.  
  
She didn't like things she couldn't control. I think that's why she liked her death more than the idea of mine.  
  
I first started fearing them the summer she was gone. About halfway through we had a really bad storm, up in LA where everything was strange to me already. It woke me up early in the night and kept me trembling late into the morning.  
  
I started worrying about what would happen if Buffy was caught in a storm (even hoping that she was caught in *this* storm, because then she'd be close), trapped all alone in a web of her own fear. I wondered if she'd be scared. If she'd miss me.  
  
If she missed me anyway.  
  
Then I started worrying about myself. I counted between the first flash of lightning and peal of thunder, one Mississippi two Mississippi three Mississippi, like you're supposed to. It felt like the storm was centred on us forever.  
  
It feels like it's centred on me forever now.  
  
When I think of storms now it's not huddling with Buffy I remember or, once, dancing with Mom in the rain, laughing. It's lightning and shrieking and my blood dripping slowly between my toes. Making the portal, where lightning danced and arced and killed my sister. I used to find the sound of the rain comforting, it pounding down and trickling through the gutters while I was tucked up safe and cosy. I realise now the security of those moments didn't come from the safety of my bed. It was from Buffy. I don't even feel safe when it rains.  
  
We don't know what happened to the creatures that came out of the portal. I guess we don't really care; I know I don't. We do care what happened to Buffy in it, but we don't know what either. Did it hurt, was it peaceful, did she regret it...  
  
We just know there was a body, a body that looked just like she was sleeping. Not a mark on her and not a noble, tired spirit inside.  
  
I tried to wake her up. Giles was holding her, so delicately, like she was precious glass or something, and Willow was crying and Xander was sobbing, but silently, with Tara and Anya trying to provide futile comfort. Spike was howling.  
  
I went over and shook her, pulling her out of Giles' fatherly, sorrowful embrace. I could barely see her, through the tears and the blood haze - which is still there, I can't see it but I know it's there - but I took her by her thin shoulders and shook her and pinched her, so she could wake up and yell at me for it like she always did, and finally, before Spike pulled me savagely off her, slapped her.  
  
Where'd you go, Buffy? With Mom? What was left was like a rag doll.  
  
A rainstorm wet the earth as they piled it over her body (so small, smaller than me, I never realised she was that small) and thunder and lightning protested her wake, a small affair because hardly anyone knew her, really knew her, what she did for them, for us.  
  
We've had a lot of phenomena. Hardly unusual for Sunnydale, but this has been of the type the newspaper can write up truthfully... proper, scientific phenomena like sheet lightning and ball lightning and storms that seem to last for a dark, crazed eternity.  
  
I would have gobbled it up once, badgered Willow to take me to the places the scientists were looking at and she would have been only too happy to. I don't like to ask now, even if I was interested. How can I ask for anything else, after taking the life of their best friend? How can I go and marvel at wonders knowing my sister's blood, my blood, fed them all?  
  
I haven't spoken her name aloud since me tearful embarrassment of a eulogy. Everything I wanted to say about her, I couldn't find the words or I wasn't allowed to say them. The important people know them, but in a couple of years the world will forget her name.  
  
I think they all think I already have, or that I'm trying. As if I could! Buffy was always the best of us two... now she always will be. That's how it's supposed to be. I cling to them. I need them. They're the ones that knew her when I wasn't real. So I don't talk about her because I don't want to remind them, or me, of that. Of the fact that she's the only who thought my life, my unreal fake life, was worth hers.  
  
Damned if I do, damned if I don't.  
  
Is it automatically hell for causing the death of a Slayer? The Key was evil after all.  
  
I wonder, if I went outside could I get struck by lightning... know what she did. Feel what she did.  
  
I'd probably only survive it. 


End file.
